The Path to Lordship Begins in the North

As batches of recovery potions began to be produced, Linde suddenly said to Isa beside him, "Do you think it's possible that we can use an arcane array to produce holy water?"

Holy water is the highest-grade potion that the female protagonist can make in the game. Its effect is to remove all abnormal statuses from the body. It is extremely precious. By the end of the game, the number of holy waters that the female protagonist can make can be counted on two hands.

The reality is slightly different from the game; in this world, holy water manifests as a panacea.

It can not only fight against plagues and diseases, but also remove various curses, and most importantly, it does not cause drug resistance.

Of course, it's also possible that holy water is so precious that most people don't need a quantity that would lead to drug resistance.

"No way, absolutely impossible."

Isa shook her head frantically and explained, "My lord, the holy water refining array requires not only magic power but also the power of faith. Otherwise, the Holy See would not have made the holy water formula and refining magic public, and those alchemists would have already begun to refine holy water on a large scale."

Then Isha's eyes suddenly dimmed. After all, Isha had lost the power of faith. Originally, Isha might have been able to refine a bottle of holy water every one or two months, but now it was very difficult for Isha to even summon a ray of holy light.

Linde did not directly refute Isa's words. Instead, he walked to an empty mixing table in the factory, began to collect alchemical materials for making holy water, and then used the skills of the female protagonist, Isa, which he inherited from the game save, to begin constructing a spell model.

The magic of creating holy water is not strictly alchemy, but divine magic. A soft holy light shone down from the void above Linde's head and onto the transparent bottle in Linde's hand that was full of materials.

Under the holy light, the materials in the bottle began to melt and fuse, eventually turning into a bottle of transparent liquid that emitted a crystal-clear light.

"Holy crap, bro, you can actually use divine magic! That's amazing!"

Lena clapped her hands, seemingly very happy, while Lind looked speechless. It seemed that he never used these skills, to the point that he had almost forgotten that he was also a professional who had inherited a perfect save file.

After all, the female protagonist's skills in the original work don't seem to be of much use for territory building.

Isa and Lisha stared at Lind in disbelief throughout the entire process. Isa, in particular, was the first time Lind had ever seen Isa so shocked that her jaw almost dropped to the ground. This was the first time the chosen heroine had ever lost her composure like this.

"Lord...Lord, are you such a devout believer in the goddess? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

The stronger a person's faith, the faster the process of making holy water will be. Even the most devout priest in the capital needs to continuously infuse the holy water with faith every day for two to three weeks to make a bottle of holy water.

But right under everyone's noses, Lind actually rubbed a bottle of holy water by hand in less than three minutes.

Even if the current Pope were to come, he would probably have to question the meaning of life.

Even if Linde were a woman, the Pope would have to kneel down and beg her to become a saint.

Unfortunately, Lind was a man.

No, I'm afraid that being an ordinary saintess would no longer be enough to demonstrate Linde's identity. Isa thinks that His Holiness the Pope will probably make Linde a living god, directly becoming the incarnation of the goddess walking in the human world.

Those popes and cardinals would even consider the gender of the saintess and not be so rigid in their judgment. Who says a man can't be a saintess?

After all, the goddess hasn't performed any miracles in a long time, and someone who can conjure holy water in three minutes is practically a walking miracle.

Linde scratched his head. In the game, the creation of holy water is represented by an extremely long cooldown time based on the number of days in the game. However, the creation process is very fast. After all, players can't be sitting in front of the screen making potions 24 hours a day, can they?

This is a normal change made for the sake of gameplay.

Unexpectedly, the skills Linde inherited after transmigrating were perfectly replicated in this aspect. So although Linde could conjure a bottle of holy water in three minutes, he was actually unable to use this skill for the next month.

However, this is already frightening enough. If the Vatican finds out, not only will Lena be unable to protect Lind, but even Grand Duke Lars might not be able to save him.

After all, hand-rubbing holy water is a skill that only a holy maiden appointed by the gods can master, according to legend. The legendary holy maiden used a few minutes to hand-rub a bottle of holy water to save her believers.

However, the legend also clearly states that the saintess is a messenger of God and, like the goddess, is a woman.

Thinking of this, Isa couldn't help but stare at Lind's lower body. Feeling a chill in his crotch, Lind subconsciously squeezed his legs together. When he followed her gaze, Isa had already looked away, leaving Lind feeling confused.

After temporarily dismissing the workers around who were unaware of what had happened, Lind said to Isa, "I regret that I am only a casual believer in the Goddess of Light, or even, strictly speaking, not a believer at all. I haven't attended a single prayer mass in the past few months, and I don't believe in any god."

Isa felt her worldview crumble; an unbeliever had actually conjured a bottle of holy water from holy light with his bare hands.

To be honest, Isa felt more inclined to believe that the lord was actually a descendant of the goddess left on earth, or even the goddess's illegitimate son, who just didn't know it himself, or that Linde was simply a saint disguised as a man. This would be more acceptable to Isa.

Lind then made an even more shocking statement.

"Why don't we try using an arcane array to build my spell model and see if the magic stone can be used to refine holy water?"

"No! Absolutely not!"

Before Lind could finish speaking, he was abruptly interrupted by Isa, whose violent aura even startled Rena, while Lisha immediately hid behind Lind.

Isa paused for a moment after seeing everyone's reaction, then took a deep breath and apologized, "I'm sorry, my lord. I just felt that doing this was not only a desecration of the goddess, but also something terrible might happen."

Linde was also startled. Unlike the relaxed atmosphere in the game, Isa in this timeline had actually killed people with her own hands.

However, Linde could understand. After all, there really is a god in this world, and Isha is the saint chosen by the goddess. Using inorganic matter to cast divine spells would probably be considered extremely blasphemous even by the most extreme cultists.

This touches upon the fundamental questions of faith.

"Brother, why don't we just forget about it?"

Even Lena knew what this meant, which shows how serious the matter was.

"I can pretend I don't know about this experiment, but I must know what the results of this experiment are."

Linde was surprisingly assertive this time. After all, because of the so-called God, Linde's policies and some things had always been constrained, including the long-delayed church construction on his territory and whether to carry out minor religious reforms on his territory.

These seemingly unimportant places, which do not affect production, are precisely the most dangerous places.

Whether to replace the old faith with a new one will directly affect what the territory will look like in the future, and how to handle the relationship with the Papacy.

"Isa, don't you want to know if the goddess you've always believed in can still respond to her followers?"

Linde looked at Isa. After a long period of contact, Linde knew that Isa in this timeline was not a rigid person. She was afraid to do this experiment only because the proposal was a bit hasty. Her long-standing faith made it impossible for Isa to accept such a blasphemous thing.

Isa looked at the holy water in Lind's hand.

If the goddess can truly answer the prayers of believers, then why does she allow these devout followers to suffer? Isa considers herself more devout than most pastors and believers, but why is the power of the holy light drifting further and further away from her?

What Isa couldn't understand the most was that Lord Lind had absolutely no faith, yet he could conjure holy light with his bare hands.

In fact, Isa had already realized during their conversation in the tent that Lind's underlying thoughts did not involve gods at all, and were even based on the premise that gods did not exist. Yet, this person had the ability to conjure holy water with his bare hands in just a few minutes.

But Isa still couldn't convince herself. After all, she couldn't easily abandon her long-held beliefs. In the end, Isa reluctantly found a reason for herself: since even the lord, who was suspected to be the goddess's illegitimate child, didn't care about this experiment, why should she, someone abandoned by the goddess, be afraid?

Isa, who had arbitrarily listed Linde as the goddess's illegitimate son, finally made up her mind and said to Linde, "My lord, let's begin the experiment. I will help you convert the spell model into an arcane magic circle."

Unlike Isa, Lena and Lisha were both a little scared, but more curious than scared. They didn't think as much as Isa did. Lena even thought that if her brother could still conjure holy light even with such thoughts, didn't that mean the goddess had no objections? If the goddess had no objections, then naturally she would have no objections either.

Therefore, the dismantling of the spell model began very quickly and in top secret.

Even Lisha was amazed by the ingenious structure and incredible algorithm of the spell model Linde used, which came from a game save. It seemed as if it were not something a human could have come up with, but rather something from a super brain with terrifying computing power. The spell model could be converted into a mathematical model almost seamlessly, and then the mathematical model could be directly converted into an Olympiad magic circle. The whole process was so smooth that it was as if the spell itself was converted from an Olympiad magic circle.

The calculations that were originally expected to take weeks or even longer were completed by the team in just a few days.

In a secluded corner of the gray-collar area, a place undetectable by any detection spell, Lena's knights dispersed to keep watch, with Lena herself personally overseeing the operation, waiting for Lind to activate the magic trigger.

As Lind turned the knob, the familiar process began, and invisible magic flowed through the runes into the magic circle, which then began to work.

Isa had mixed feelings; this was the first time she had hoped that the research and experiments on her territory would fail.

But as a beam of holy light descended from the void above the magic circle, the raw materials in the transparent bottle began to dissolve, and Isha knew that her hopes had been dashed.

After shutting down the magic circle, Linde picked up the bottle of holy water he had prepared and looked at everyone.

Lena, Isa, and Lisha all wore expressions of shock or horror. It was impossible for them to have any faith, or even be inorganic matter that wasn't even human, to create holy water using only magic.

Linde then repeated the creation process several more times using this arcane circle. The intriguing thing was that although this arcane circle, like Linde, had a cooldown time in real time, he could fool the system and continue production simply by changing the output power.

This is practically like having no skill cooldown. As long as you have enough magic stones, you can completely turn on the unlimited firepower mode when producing holy water.

"I'm afraid that the power of faith is not a necessary condition for creating holy water."

Lind stated his conclusion, looking at Isa, whose eyes had become lifeless.

“Even the power of faith may not be a necessary condition for using and casting divine magic.”

Before Lind could continue, Isa said in a trembling voice, "The gods are dead..."

"Calm down, Isa. This only shows that using divine magic, or creating holy water, does not necessarily require faith in a goddess."

Linde didn't think this meant the goddess was dead. After all, the game's background clearly stated that the goddess had chosen the female protagonist as her representative, which meant that no matter what state the goddess was in now, she at least had the ability to interfere with the human world.

"Do not..."

Isa countered from a perspective Lind had never considered: "The moment humans could perform divine magic without gods, gods were already dead."